Released February 1, 2026 as free (cc) digital download and in beautiful limited cassette edition.

A. Stefan Christoff - Demand the Impossible

1. A sky entrance
   
2. Arc
   
3. Turning in the Bosphorus
   
4. Demand the Impossible

An album recorded in Sofia, Bulgaria one late evening in October 2023
Recorded and mixed by Yoncho Pavlov at AD 57, Sofia, Bulgaria
All piano compositions are original improvisations by Stefan Christoff

B. Open to the Sea - The Sofia Intuition

1. Please stop loving me
   
2. I will not wake you up
   
3. I recognise you
   
4. Bodies in contact

Reworks of Stefan Christoff's original piano recordings with:
Saverio Rosi - OP-1 with wind instruments, double bass, synths
Matteo Uggeri - laptop, samples, random drumming
Enrico Coniglio - guitars

Mastered by Ryan Morey
Original artwork by Catalina Villegas-Burgos
Layout by Angel Draganov

Síntesis boreal

Esta pieza surgió como una experimentación con la idea de los triángulos, sus búsquedas de balance y de síntesis. Me sentía atraída por la energía del sol y los eventos cósmicos como eclipses y auroras boreales, así que los puse a danzar y a atravesarse. Cuando escuché el álbum de Stefan ‘’Demand the Impossible’’ sentí que mi experimentación le venía perfectamente por el juego de voces entre el bajo y las notas un poco más agudas e insistentes de esta obra. De algún modo, veía también los triángulos en su música y los tonos ‘boreales’ sobre fondo oscuro. En ambas obras: la musical y la visual, percibo desplazamientos y formas que se cruzan. Cuando ambos triángulos se encuentran, ¿es el sol un testigo de aquel eclipse o es acaso una fuerza oculta?
– Catalina Villegas-Burgos. (album artwork artist)

///

It felt unlikely that this recording session would actually happen in Sofia, Bulgaria, but I am really happy that it did and I can share this moment in time. I had played a concert in Sofia that same evening hosted by Tsvetan Tsvetanov of the experimental Bulgarian National Radio program Alarma Punk Jazz. After the show finished I rushed over to the basement studio, AD 57, just before midnight. Sound engineer Yoncho Pavlov generously agreed to record this session super late and we recorded until just before 2 am in the morning. After the session I ran back to the apartment where I was staying with Canadian activist scholar Ezra Winton, packed my bags and rushed to the airport for a flight to Berlin that was set to depart at around 6am.

Despite all the rushing around this recording, the mood and feeling of the sound reminds me of the stars. In certain parts of Sofia there aren’t a lot of street lights and the sky feels close to touch. The mountains that shape the Bulgarian landscape also hold a presence and vibe in the capital city. While playing piano I was thinking of the sky above, the stars and the lands around Sofia and the Balkan region. This project is important to me because of my Bulgarian roots, my father is Macedonian Bulgarian. It was a long road from growing up in Canada to finally making it back to Bulgaria and to finding a path to work on this recording and music in Sofia. I hope that you can feel the emotional resonance in the piano tones.

Another layer to this recording is the fact that recording took place in the context of the Israeli state’s military attacks on the Palestinian people in Gaza. The recording took place in November and the horrifying news coming out of Gaza spanked an intense need to take action around the world. In the week before this recording I had been with friends at protests and events to mobilize for Palestine in Montréal, Amsterdam and London. I was often thinking about Palestine during this recording session and the critical importance of sustaining an involvement and finding ways to support Palestine throughout my lifetime. Walking with and supporting the Palestinian struggle for freedom and against colonialism is one of the essential progressive causes of our time, we must never be silent and always find ways to stand up when Palestine is in the headlines and critically when it is not. I certainly was thinking of my Palestinian friends and comrades around the world who have played such an important role in my life over the last decades throughout this recording, that is the honest truth. I hope that you can hear the sense of commitment and urgency around supporting Palestine that I have carried and acted upon my entire adult life.
Thank you for listening to this solo piano recording from Sofia, it means a lot to me, sending love from Montreal.
– Stefan Christoff.

///

When Stefan sent me his recordings from this session in Sofia, my first reaction was "this is a true event of synchronicity", as I had been there just a few weeks before, experiencing some very special moments in that city. Initially, Stefan simply asked me to work on the pieces alone, adding samples and field recordings. I did so, but his piano playing inspired me to create more complex arrangements. Consequently, I asked my friend Saverio Rosi if he would be willing to work with his OP-1, adding some bass layers. He was inspired and went on to add synthetic wind instruments as well. At that point, we had two-thirds of the Open to the Sea band involved, so it felt natural to bring Enrico Coniglio in. It took some time to find the right spaces within the pieces, but he managed to play guitar on a couple of the tracks, providing subtle and very discreet layers of arrangement. We then sent the result to Stefan, who was enthusiastic: "I love the sense of space, the interplay that you all bring into the space, all the heart in the playing." So here is the result. We hope you will enjoy it.
– Matteo Uggeri, Open to the Sea

[mhrk478]

plus-circle Add Review

comment

Reviews